"Hobbyhorse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... minutes. Her song usually came forth when she was at play, or exercising in some way. One time she became especially delighted because her wheel squeaked when she turned it. You know how pleased a boy is when his hobbyhorse creaks. So Hespie, too, enjoyed the new noise; but it so drowned her pretty little warble that a drop of oil was put in the wheel ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 8, February 22, 1914 • Various
... himself up to the government of a ruling passion, or, in other words, when his hobbyhorse grows headstrong, farewell cool reason and fair discretion. My Uncle Toby's wound was near well; he broiled with impatience to put his design in execution; and so, without consulting further, with any ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... dimly to recall as a tall, fragile, pale, amiable figure, not very effective. My aunt Ebe I afterwards came to know well, and shall defer mention of her. So I was encompassed by kindly petticoats, and was very happy, but might have been better for a stout playmate of my own sex. I had a hobby-horse, which I rode constantly to fairy-land in quest of treasure to bestow upon my friends. I swung with Una on the gate, and looked out upon the wonder of the passing world. The tragedy of my grandmother's death, which, as ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... feast, sing and dance, have their puppet-plays, hobby-horses, tabors, crowds, bagpipes, etc., play at ball, and barley-breaks, and what sports and recreations they like best. ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... remembered once having seen him, and he was, in fact, a walking De Beers mine. For his personal adornment, more than a million dollars' worth of gems did relay duty. He had scores of sets, every one of them fit for a king of diamonds. It was a curious hobby for a great, strong man, yet he was not alone in his love of and sheer affection for things beautiful. Not love of display or desire to attract notice to himself had prompted him to collect diamonds, but the mere pleasure of owning them, ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... pettishly, 'you talk just like Giles. He often laughs at me and makes himself very unpleasant. But then, as I often tell him, philanthropists are not pleasant people with whom to live; a man with a hobby is always odious. Well, Miss Garston, if you will be so prying, my name is Elizabeth Grant Hamilton; only from a baby I have been called ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his beloved Roman Camp; and this diversion enabled me to escape from Marius—I fear with a somewhat unseemly precipitation—by pressing him for information in regard to the matter which the children had in hand. As to openly checking the Vidame, when once he fairly is astride of his hobby, the case is hopeless. To cast a doubt upon even the least of his declarations touching the doings of the Roman General is the signal for a blaze of arguments down all his battle front; and I really do not like even to speculate upon what might happen were I to ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... She knew that argument or persuasion was lost on her sister once she was started on her hobby-horse, ill-temper. She could only hope that she would forget about it by degrees. And after a while it almost seemed so. They went down to the shore, where it was so bright and pleasant that it did not seem possible for the crossest person in the world to resist the soft yet fresh breeze, the sunshine ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... Verse, "A Hero to his Hobby-horse," came out in the Magazine volume for 1875, and, like many of the other verses, it was written to fit ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... dames, it is not so difficult to create the beautiful, if one has a little taste and great patience. My inn—it has become my hobby, my pride, my wife, my children. Some men marry their art, I espoused my inn. I found her poor, tattered, broken-down, in health, if you will; verily, as your Shakespeare says of some country wench: 'a poor thing but mine own.'" Monsieur Paul's possession of the English language was scarcely ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... life was singularly virtuous; he was a faithful husband, a careful father and a considerate master. A book-lover and antiquary, he made a special hobby of heraldry and genealogy. It was the conscious and unconscious aim of the age to reconstruct a new landed aristocracy on the ruins of the old, and Burghley was a great builder and planter. All the arts of architecture and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... then, but take up what he calls a hobby! He buys and gloats over every silly detective story that was ever written; practises disguises and making himself up, as he calls it; takes lessons in conjuring; haunts the police courts; consorts with criminals—in short, behaves like a great overgrown child in his own native ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "I make a hobby of it," he snarled. "I don't even care if they're ladies. But I'm fresh out of romance and slightly soured. And I'm worried about the one friend who's dumb enough to stick by me. You picked a bad time to ask. ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... Mytelene. He is perhaps the best-informed Hydriot; but he wants decision, and demands the advice of everybody at the moment he should be acting. This man takes little part in politics and follows his mercantile pursuits. His hobby-horse is ship-building, in which art he is such a proficient as to be quite the Seppings of Hydra. As to the rest, he is a very worthy, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... what his own work is to be, the more useful and delightful will be his life at the University and later. There are few men who have a passion for all knowledge; there is hardly one who has not a hobby of his own. Those so-called hobbies ought to be utilized, and not, as they are now, discouraged, if we wish our Universities to produce more men like Faraday, Carlyle, Grote, or Darwin. I do not say that in an examination ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... Saltire pleasantly. He held the lantern high, and it lighted up a shelf upon which stood some curious glass jars with perforated stoppers. "I see you have a fine collection of live tarantulas and scorpions. I remember now I have often seen you groping among the aloes. Curious hobby!" ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Sutter had pursued a hobby which had begun in his boyhood days during summer vacations at the seashore—the collecting of exoskeletons of mollusks and crustaceans. Long ago his assortment of cowries, spiny combs and yellow dragon-castles had outgrown their glass cabinet and overflowed into three carefully catalogued ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... get half a chance," observed Will, whose mind usually ran in the one channel, which of course covered his hobby, "I mean to snap off a picture of him. I've got a lot of freaks in my collection, but nary a hermit ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... warm-harted, and stiddy goin man. He never slept over! The prevailin weakness of most public men is to slop over! They git filled up and slop. They Rush Things. They travel too much on the high presser principle. They git onto the fust poplar hobby-hoss which trots along, not caring a cent whether the beest is even goin, clear sited and sound or spavined, blind and bawky. Of course they git throwed eventooualy, if not sooner. When they see the multitood goin it blind they go pel mel with it, instid of exerted theirselves to set ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... I shall keep in touch with the crew by wireless, and advise you of their progress from time to time. Alma is a sort of a hobby with me; I wouldn't mind ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... care which, so it was with some difficulty that Aunt Jonathan induced him to listen to her proposal of making a clergyman of Rowland. He yielded at last, however, in the hope that when Owen had had enough of the sea, he would come and settle at home, since, next to this, his favourite hobby, he ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... hobby, Lucy," cried he, "and speak to me like a woman and like my niece. If this is your objection, overcome it for ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... unmoved for ages. The overleaning rock, which is separated from my temporary home only by a few yards, probably afforded shelter to generations of those degraded human beings from whom the anthropologist who puts no bridle on his hobby-horse is pleased to claim descent. Near the base is one of those symmetrically scooped-out hollows which are such a striking peculiarity of the formation here, and which suggest to the irreverent ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Geschenk, a present, means something poured out (see nuncheon, p. 124), while a tip is in French pourboire and in German Trinkgeld, even when accepted by a lifelong abstainer. In English we "ride a hobby," i.e., a hobby-horse, or wooden horse. German has the same metaphor, "ein Steckenpferd reiten," and French says "enfourcher un dada," i.e., to bestride a gee-gee. Hobby, for Mid. Eng. hobin, a nag, was a proper name ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... apple. Eaten, it afflicted Adam with the first colic known to this planet. He, the weaker vessel, sorrowed over his transgression; but I doubt if Eve's repentance was thorough; for the plucking of unripe fruit has been, ever since, a favorite hobby of her sons and daughters,—until now our mankind has got itself into such a chronic state of colic, that even Dr. Carlyle declares himself unable to prescribe any Morrison's Pill or other remedial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... exclusively in a circle where he is idolised both for his genius and the excellence of his disposition, he has acquired strong prejudices, though all of an upright and honourable cast. He rides his High Church hobby too hard, and it will not do to run a tilt upon it against all the world. Gifford used to crop his articles considerably, and they bear mark of it, being sometimes decousues. Southey said that Gifford cut out his middle joints. When John comes ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... with all manner of novel appliances for their amusement, including beautiful little carriages drawn by four goats with girls or boys driving, boats sailing in the air, seemingly propelled by oars, and hobby horses flying round on whirligigs with boys vainly trying to catch each other. No people have ever taken the trouble to invent so many amusements for children as have the French. The people enjoyed being always in the open air, night and day. The parks are crowded with amusement seekers, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... man and the lower animals, down to the number of their ribs, seemed no proper topic for light talk at an evening party. It made Aunt Euphemia gasp. Anatomy was Lou's hobby. She was an excellent and practical taxidermist, thanks to her father. And she had learned to name the bones of the human frame along with her ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... like, requisite to such an action: also Minerall men and Refiners. Besides, for solace of our people, and allurement of the Sauages, we were prouided of Musike in good variety: not omitting the least toyes, as Morris dancers, Hobby horsse, and Maylike conceits to delight the Sauage people, whom we intended to winne by all faire meanes possible. And to that end we were indifferently furnished of all petty haberdasherie wares to barter ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... hobby, a machine to copy sculpture, suggested to him by an implement he had seen and admired in Paris in 1802, where it was used for tracing and multiplying the dies of medals. He foresaw the possibility of enlarging its powers so as to make it capable of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... anticipations. His brother, also, according to the surgeon's last report, afforded hopes of convalescence. A kind of terror came over him that his plans might fail, because he felt almost certain that if Alice and his brother both recovered, Mr. Lindsay might, or rather would, mount his old hobby, and insist on having them married, in the teeth of all opposition on the part of either himself or his mother. This was a gloomy prospect for him, and one which he could not contemplate without falling back upon still ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... outfits, and the name of the cruiser was suggested to them by the fine spring-wires used to make contact with the crystals in their detectors. No doubt, it was the catchiness of the word, as well as its association with their hobby, that appealed to them in the general search for ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... know pretty well and who kept me filled in on the latest UFO scuttlebutt being passed around the Washington press circles. He was one of those humans who had a brain like a filing cabinet; he could remember everything about everything. UFO's were a hobby of his. He remembered when the Grudge Report came out; in fact, he'd managed to get a copy of his own. He said the report had been quite impressive, but only in its ambiguousness, illogical reasoning, and very apparent effort to write off ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... History from 1610 to 1660, I owe more items of information than I can count.—George Thomason was a London bookseller of the Civil War time; his place of business being the "Rose and Crown" in St. Paul's Churchyard. He was of Royalist sympathies; but his hobby was to collect impartially all the pamphlets, broad-sheets, &c., that teemed from the press on both sides, and not only those that teemed from the English press, but also all published abroad that bore on current English questions. He began ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... hair was black; therefore he dyed it, and then the likeness was complete; and when he met another gentleman in the street also imitating the imperial countenance he was jealous and looked at him disdainfully. This need of imitation soon became his hobby, and, having heard an usher at the Tuilleries imitate the voice of the emperor, he also acquired the same intonations and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... miles from London, and is a pretty town on the skirts of Derbyshire. This place is remarkable, or was lately, for a sport on New Year's Day and Twelfth Day, called The Hobby-Horse Dance, from a person who rode upon the image of a horse, with a bow and arrow in his hands, with which he made a snapping noise, and kept time to the music, while six men danced the hay and other country ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... The Swifts chuckled. Chow's hobby of concocting weird dishes was a standing joke at Enterprises, and already had led to such dubious triumphs as armadillo ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... The clearest thinkers of the world have had soft spots in their brains; for instance, the daemon belief of Socrates and the ludicrous superstitions of Pythagoras; and you have laid your finger on the softened spot in Mill's skull, 'suffrage.' That is a jaded, spavined hobby of his, and he is too shrewd a logician to involve himself in the inconsistency of 'extended suffrage' which excludes women. When I read his 'Representative Government' I saw that his reason had dragged anchor, the prestige of his great name vanished, and ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Holmes, standing at the corner and glancing along the line, "I should like just to remember the order of the houses here. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is Mortimer's, the tobacconist, the little newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane's carriage-building depot. That carries us right on to the ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... at college, and I learned a lot from him outside my regular course. He was a pretty good scholar despite his love of fun, and his particular hobby was paleontology. He used to tell me about the various forms of animal and vegetable life which had covered the globe during former eras, and so I was pretty well acquainted with the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals of paleolithic ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the true pioneer, or, rather, the king of pioneers, to whom Guff gave place without a murmur, for Reuben was a modest man; and the moment he heard that one of the gentlemen of the Canadian fur-trading company had taken up his favourite hobby, and meant to work out the problem, he resolved, as he said, "to play second fiddle," all the more that the man who thus unwittingly supplanted him was a mountaineer ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... company, nor introduce a topic in which he only is interested or informed. The more serious questions of life are barred in society; people wish to be amused, not instructed. An inveterate talker, especially one of a didactic turn, is a bore. So is the man who puts a hobby through its paces. Avoid exaggerations in conversation, also extravagances, such as "beastly this" or "awfully that," also avoid over emphasis. Don't ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... is a deep bow-window at the back; the principal door is at the Left, and a smaller one on the Right. Toys of all sizes, for all ages, are scattered about with a holiday air. There is a sofa on the Right and a hobby horse on the Left. ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... to help us make them, and she was telling me she'd like me to cut them a little more carefully than I did the last time I helped her. You'd never think Aunt Sue has a hobby, would you?" ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... sickly feeling in the pit of the stomach. It was the apprehension of a prisoner awaiting a verdict; the nauseating sensation of one who sees death facing him, with the chances a thousand to one against him. A half-plaited rawhide rope was lying in his lap; the hobby of making these his sister had persuaded him to turn to profitable account. He was expert in their manufacture, and found a ready market for his wares ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... was inattentive while the surveyor dilated on the probable value, the accessibility, and the relative height of the "fall" of the various sites, and their available water-power, and he put irrelevant queries concerning ineligible streams in other localities. No man comfortably mounted upon his hobby relishes an interruption. The surveyor would stop with a sort of bovine surprise, and ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a hobby of mine. Don't think otherwise because I am running a stink engine. I'd rather be streaking along here behind a pair of fast-steppers. But I'd lose time on them, and, worse than that, I'd be too anxious about them all the time. As for this thing, why, it has no nerves, no delicate joints nor ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... solemnly, "I take you to witness my vow. If I receive another place, I give a hobby-horse to little Capet. You grant me ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... born in London; passed through Edinburgh University to the Scotch bar, and was chief authority on genealogical cases; his hobby was the collection of literary rarities, and he published editions of ancient literary remains; he ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... chorus, modulating the voice according to the theme. Symposia is not an unbefitting term. Meetings are held for public competition in gidayu recitation; but in the privacy of one's circle and hobby the banquet is an important feature—at least to the guests. In his history of "Japanese Literature" (Dai Nihon Bungaku Shi, pp. 591-596) Suzuki Cho[u]ko[u] gives a long extract from the play, as sample of Tsuruya's powers as a dramatist. Adopted into the House of the actor Tsuruya Namboku, and ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... cried Hardy, returning at the moment with the pipes, and catching the Captain's last word, "on one of your hobby horses already! You're not safe!—I can't leave you for two minutes. Here's a long pipe for you. How in the world did he get ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... joined them, her father's eye was caught and held by the ring upon her finger. Roger knew rings, they were his hobby, and this huge yellow solitaire in its new and brilliant setting at once awakened his dislike. It just fitted the life they were to lead! What life? As he listened to his daughter he kept wondering if she were so sure. Had she felt no uneasiness? ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... to shift his activities to Paris, he would be taken up at once for his actual value as modern artist expressing present day notions of actual things. Perhaps he will not care to be called Dada, but it is nevertheless true. He has ridden his own vivacious hobby-horse with as much liberty, and one may even say license, as is possible for one intelligent human being. There is no space to tell casually of his various aspects such as champion billiard player, racehorse enthusiast, etcetera. This information would please his dadaistic confreres, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... caught the idea that strength was as much of the quality as the quantity of the muscle, while superiority in performance required a certain mind as well as strength. Having adopted the doctrine, like most men with a hobby, he was always looking for ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... REALM does not stand still— its Editor is always abreast of girlish interests. Whether it is a new career for girls, a new game, a new stitch in needlework, or a new hobby or fad, THE GIRL'S REALM is sure to be the first magazine to ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... mind, marked though it was usually by his geniality, makes it the more surprising in Father Uria's case. Yet such was the fact, and as such was it recognized by all with whom he came in contact; for in this instance it was "love me love my"—cats! This hobby of the friar was one he had had from childhood; but gaining man's estate, he had kept it in subjection (fearing it was not in accord with the strictest propriety, especially after taking orders) until he came to California. Here he had found a life of such loneliness, that, as a refuge ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... always. It was said that the Duke of Hertfordshire cared for nothing but his collection of birds' eggs, and that the collections of guests at Keeb were formed entirely by his young Duchess. It was said that he had climbed trees in every corner of every continent. The Duchess' hobby was easier. She sat aloft ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Wallace's wonderful cleverness, but he is not cautious enough in my opinion. I find I must (and I always distrust myself when I differ from him) separate rather widely from him all about birds' nests and protection; he is riding that hobby to death. I never read anything so miserable as Andrew Murray's criticism on Wallace in the last number of his Journal. (221/5. See "Journal of Travel and Natural History," Volume I., No. 3, page 137, London, 1868, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Illingworth (now deceased), who ran the Worth Valley Chair Works, at Ingrow, opposite the Worth Valley Hotel. A new stone building now occupies the place of the old structure. Now my friend Howard's great hobby was making marionettes, and performing with them; and of these Lilliputian mummers he made a set, and then discussed ways and means for appearing with them in public. I was by him put into the trinitarian post of scenic artist, advance agent, and stage manager. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... the (wheeze) sticks will prove very (wheeze) hereafter,' replied Jogglebury, bridling up at the imputation on his hobby. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... love," says the King. "I was out a-hunting, and by chance I came to a place I'd never been in before. It was in a wood, and there was an old chalk-pit there, and out of the chalk-pit there came a queer kind of a sort of a humming, humming noise. So I got off my hobby to see what made it, and went quite quiet to the edge of the pit and looked down. And what do you think I saw? The funniest, queerest, smallest, little, black Thing you ever set eyes upon. And it had a little spinning-wheel ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... yes; but actually I don't know the girl any better now than the night I met her. She's a strange creature—self-willed, fiery, sweet, and sometimes as clever as your Ancient Adversary. But friendship with her makes me think of the days when I was a kid. My great hobby was building sky-scrapers with blocks, and very laboriously I would erect the structure up to the point when "feeding-time" or "washing-time" or "being shown to the minister" used always to intervene. When I returned, the blocks had always fallen down. Well, friendship with Elise (pretty name, isn't ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Then politics drew him, and, step by step, through rough and ready service at the polls, in town caucus, county convention, what not, he secured his footing and finally a seat in the lower house of the State Legislature. In politics a hobby is often a useful piece of property, and Shelby, who had a hobby, rode it to success; it made him a marked man in the first month of his term, it gave him a popular title, it compelled his renomination and reflection. Nowadays chairmen always introduced ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... scholarship prizes as carelessly as a policeman takes peanuts from a Dago stand. Since then he's gone up so fast that every time I see him I insult him by congratulating him on getting the place he's just been promoted from. But what was Rearick's hobby at Siwash? Stealing hatpins. He had four hundred hatpins when he graduated, and he never could see anything wrong in it. Guess he's got them yet. Perkins is in Congress already. He out-debated the whole Northwest and wrote ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... say a few words in regard to Douglas's great hobby of negro equality. He thinks—he says at least—that the Republican party is in favor of allowing whites and blacks to intermarry, and that a man can't be a good Republican unless he is willing to elevate black men to office and to associate with them on terms of perfect equality. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... brow of the hill overlooking Sanditon and the sea, exposed to every wind that blows; but he will confess to no discomforts, nor suffer his family to feel any from the change. The following extract brings him before the reader, mounted on his hobby:— ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... a little sharply. "You are like a boy with a new hobby. It is I who wish that you leave when ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sir, are a snare and a delusion!" continues Miss Majendie, who has now mounted her hobby, and will ride it to the death. "Who can tell the age of any man in this degenerate age? We look at their faces, and say he must be so and so, and he a few years younger, but looks are vain, ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... Buzzards (18-24). These include the South American caracaras; the European rough-legged falcon; the European kite; the Indian colny falcon; varieties of the honey buzzard; and the North American spotted-tailed hobby. The true falcons follow next in order of succession (24-26). The courage of these birds is familiar to all who have read of the hunting days of old. In the cases before the visitor, are grouped the European hobby and kestrel, and the peregrine and ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... strange Utopias—most often generous. He was too subtle and too skeptical to keep his head even in his enthusiasms, and he never compromised himself by applying his theories. But he had to have some hobby: it was a game to him, and he was always changing from one to another. For the time being his craze was for kindness. It was not enough for him to be kind naturally: he wished to be thought kind: he professed kindness, and acted it. Out of reaction against the hard, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... table with his thin, taper fingers, like a man trying to recall a tune. He had, indeed, made a hobby of such fables, and he was not without vanity about his artistic touch ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... prefers Miss Jemima's other hobby to that black one upon which she is preparing to precede the bier of the universe).—"Yes, my love, we'll avoid that subject, if you please. Mr. Dale has his own opinions, and it becomes me, you know, as a parson's wife" (said smilingly: Mrs. Dale has as pretty a dimple as any of Miss ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conversation here is of societies, the Girls' Friendly Society, the Cottage Hospital, the movements of the Church, the continuance of the war, the fear the rest of the Tilchester Yeomanry will volunteer; and now and then the hostess warms up, if there is a question of a subscription, to her own pet hobby. Their houses are for the most part tasteless, too; they seem to live in a respectable borne world of daily duties and sleep. Of the three really big houses within driving distance, one is shut up, ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... garden were his hobby: he was always doing something; painting, whitewashing, papering and so forth. The result was that although the house itself was not of much account he had managed to get it into very good order, and as a result it was very clean ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... magazine of rebuses. These were several things of the most different natures tied up in bundles, and thrown upon one another in heaps like fagots. You might behold an anchor, a night-rail, and a hobby- horse bound up together. One of the workmen, seeing me very much surprised, told me there was an infinite deal of wit in several of those bundles, and that he would explain them to me if I pleased; I thanked him for his civility, but told him I was in very great haste ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Mr Huntingdon to join his family on the lawn. "And now, my dear sir," said the squire, "I know you are out on some errand of benevolence. You are a grand worker yourself, and a grand giver too, so tell us what is your present charitable hobby, and we must try and give you a help, so that ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... You're getting stale, overwrought. You need a fresh point of view. Lots of our people feel as you do at one time or another, but most of us learn to live with these necessary regulations, and do our work in spite of them. Let me make a suggestion, relax, take a little time off, develop a hobby. Why not do some reading in a field of science other than your own. It's good for you. Several of the people here are doing it. I do it, Carter, even ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... or three centuries were almost as antique then as they are to-day, and perhaps in many respects they were infinitely less clearly understood. As the century grew in age, so the number of book-collectors increased. The hobby became first a passion with the few, and then the fashion with the many. Henry VIII. was perhaps a passive rather than an active collector, with a distinct leaning in favour of beautiful books. His three children, who followed ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... yes, yes, to all that he suggested, and he began to lay the trail—the trail to lead to his enemy. It was his hobby, this vengeance. He was like a big, cruel boy. It was he, himself, Juan Menendez, who broke into Cray's Folly. It was he who nailed the bat wing to the door. It was he who bought two rifles of a kind of which so many millions were made during the war that anybody might ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... was represented by an ancient and battered hobby horse, astride which the eloping lovers galloped violently across the stage, to disappear from sight through the open doorway. Confusion followed among the spectators, who hurriedly supplied themselves with imaginary steeds and ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to take at least a year of post-graduate courses in the College of Agriculture. You see, I'm developing a hobby—farming. I want to do something ... something constructive. My father wasn't constructive to amount to anything. Neither were you fellows. You struck a new land in pioneer days, and you picked up money like a lot of sailors shaking out nuggets from ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... He will very likely plan for himself surroundings like Crusoe's,—a real castle in the air, natural at his happy age when we think ourselves rich if we are free and have the necessaries of life. How useful this hobby might be made if some man of sense would only suggest it and turn it to good account! The child, eager to build a storehouse for his island, would be more desirous to learn than his master would be to teach him. He would be anxious ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... expected then that when I was left my own master at the death of my father, I would pursue my hobby to the limit; and I rather guess I have been on the jump for two years. Haven't made myself famous yet, and a little of my enthusiasm in that line has dribbled away; but I'm just as determined to ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... Fairfield, and might therefore be considered to have ridden his hobby in the great whirligig with adroitness and success. But Miss Jemima was still driving round in her car, bundling the reins, and flourishing the whip, without apparently having got an inch nearer to the flying form ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... don't let your hobby run away with you. If there had been any danger they'd have got the wretch away. By the bye, Tom Bassett has gone to New York. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... He has ridden far. The flowers of the carpet are the blossoms of the tropical forest. Good luck to you, little Roger! May your hobby-horse carry you happily through the world! May you never have a more dangerous mount! Small and great, we all ride ours! Which of us ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... never more tempted to deny his principles than when he found them brought forward as a recommendation; but he could only explain that the Pursuivant was an old established county gentleman's style of paper, in the agricultural interest. Whereupon the Squire mounted his political hobby in such sort and with such abusive violence, especially as to the local representatives of the adverse party, that Felix could not help feeling that if such were indeed the opinions of his own side, he should certainly be on the other. One good effect was the sparing him any more personal ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... regarded conversation as the chief amusement, came in later years to regard it as almost the chief employment of life; and he had studied the art with the zeal of a man pursuing a favourite hobby. He had always, as he told Sir Joshua Reynolds, made it a principle to talk on all occasions as well as he could. He had thus obtained a mastery over his weapons which made him one of the most accomplished of conversational gladiators. He had one advantage which has ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... futility, the obviousness of the lie, yet somehow unable to help speaking it, Marie answered in abrupt confusion. Yes, she had been gardening; it—it was a favourite hobby nowadays; all her friends.... ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... its efficiency." The next year Mr. Jenckes made a second report, but it was not until 1871 that action on the subject was secured.[44] George W. Curtis says that at first he "pressed it upon an utterly listless Congress, and his proposition was regarded as the harmless hobby of an amiable man, from which a little knowledge of practical politics would soon dismount him."[45] Most members of Congress thought the reform a mere vagary, and that it was brought forward at a most inopportune time.[46] Mr. Jenckes was the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... saw at once by his manner that something unusual was in agitation; all their fears about the unsettled state of his mind were roused with tenfold force: they hung about him entreating him not to expose himself to the night air, but all in vain. When Wolfert was once mounted on his hobby, it was no easy matter to get him out of the saddle. It was a clear starlight night, when he issued out of the portal of the Webber palace. He wore a large napped hat tied under the chin with a handkerchief of his daughter's, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... to get through; he was probably busy somewhere in the crate. Like Belchik Pluly, the Commissioner, while still a very wealthy man, would have been a very much wealthier one if it weren't for his hobby. In his case, the hobby was ships, of which he now owned two. What made them expensive was that they had been tailor-made to the Commissioner's specifications, and his specifications had provided him with two rather exact duplicates of the two types of Scout ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... had this hobby of trying to grow nuts for a number of years. I grafted a golf club on a croquet post, and I got some wonderful golf balls. Before the war I ordered some Chinese chestnuts. I got in touch with Sakata and Company in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... hobby horse, And it was dapple grey; Its head was made of pea-straw, Its tail was made of hay. I sold it to an old woman For a copper groat; And I'll not sing my song again Without a ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... to meet with a gentleman or lady to share her home as sole paying guest; one with a hobby for gardening preferred; every home comfort; terms, L300 per ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... refinement which leads him in so many novels to treat these desirable attributes as if they were ends and objects of life in themselves. It has also misled him but too often into depicting a world of suicides, ignoring or overlooking a secret hobby, or passion, or chimaera which is the one thing that renders existence endurable to so many of the waifs and strays of life. He takes existence sadly—too sadly, it may well be; but his drabs and greys provide an atmosphere ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... monument to Dick's natural refinement and good taste. There were no jarring notes or lavish, tawdry display, the pitfalls into which the parvenue and petit bourgeois invariably fall. This was his only hobby, and just why he indulged it, he himself would have found it difficult to answer, for in reality, he ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... its erection. Gissing was finding that life seemed to be continually putting him into false positions; and now he discovered, somewhat to his chagrin, that the lovely little shrine of St. Spitz, whose stained windows glowed like rubies in its cloister of dark trees, was rather a fashionable hobby among the wealthy landowners of Dalmatian Hills. It had been closed all summer, and they had missed it. The Bishop, in his airy and indefinite way, had not made it quite plain that Gissing was only a lay reader; and in spite of his embarrassed disclaimers, he found himself introduced by Mr. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... whose existence he had never before suspected. He went through the anguishing transformation of the actor who becomes a theatrical manager, of the author who branches out into publishing, of the engineer with a hobby for odd inventions who becomes the proprietor of a factory. His romantic love for the sea and its adventures was now overshadowed by the price and consumption of coal, by the maddening competition that lowered freight rates, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... marrying Lucy with any degree of comfort, and meanwhile she would be exposed to the persecutions of the Professor. Perhaps persecutions is too harsh a word, as Braddock was kind enough to the girl. Nevertheless, he was pertinacious in gaining his aims where his pet hobby was concerned, and undoubtedly, could he see any chance of obtaining the money from Random by selling his step-daughter, he would do so. Assuredly it was dishonorable to act in this way, but the Professor was a scientific Jesuit, and deemed ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... on their hobby-horses through all the rooms when they came to see the grandparents. And the General also rode on his stick; he rode behind them in the character of groom to the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... dust or mud. Our desert creature, however, does not spurn them. On the contrary, though he pretends not to notice camels, cows, or buffaloes, he whinnies and prances with delight when he meets anything of his own shape, and assumes hobby-horse attitudes, much to the alarm of Cleopatra and Miss Hassett-Bean. Also, just to remind everybody that sand is his element, he shies at water, and almost swoons at sight of the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... were much dissatisfied with Lord John Russell, and free from control by the death of Sir Robert Peel. I said that if everything was done with Lord Palmerston's consent there would be no danger, to which Lord Clarendon assented, but doubted that he would consent to giving up what was his hobby. He added, nobody but Lord John could carry on the Foreign Affairs, but he ought not to leave the House of Commons under present circumstances, where he was now ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... many such; for he was a curious and industrious collector of old local traditions—a commodity in which the quarter where he resided mightily abounded. The collection and arrangement of such legends was, as long as I can remember him, his hobby; but I had never learned that his love of the marvellous and whimsical had carried him so far as to prompt him to commit the results of his inquiries to writing, until, in the character of residuary legatee, his will put me in possession of all his manuscript papers. To such as may ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... "It is our patron's hobby," said the curate, mincingly, as he indicated the treasures of cloisonne and of porcelain; "he does not frivol away his money as so many do, on idle dissipations and ephemeral pleasures. On the contrary, he devotes it ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... of far more importance to her than to anyone else in the world. She never conquered her jealousy; but she learnt to conceal it, and thus to keep the peace; the children became gradually a source of mutual interest that was a real tie between them; in fact it grew in time into a positive hobby and a cause of so much pride and satisfaction as to be rather a bore to ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... break off here, for I have had an intimation from Private Cox that now is my opportunity to see his bare feet. A fortnight ago I might have hesitated to accept this kind invitation; to-day I insist upon his bringing them along at once. In fact, my hobby in life is other people's feet; I have fitted a hundred pairs of them with socks and with boots, and I have assisted personally at the pricking of their blisters and the trimming of their excrescences. What a fall from our intellectual heights! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... the Weymouth draper novelist, has told a Star reporter that he only writes novels for a hobby. This sets him apart from the many who do it with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... posterity. This may be the result of large fees that can be earned at the "Halls" or by private entertainments by those at the top of the tree. But these fees are open to a conjuror of any nationality, and I am confident that the interest the European takes in his hobby has more to do with his superiority than education and large fees. The ruling Princes of India are very fond of watching a clever conjuror and can pay enormous fees, but no Indian conjuror appears to appeal to them. A ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... Novels. When he sat down at the mature age of forty-three to make fiction, there was behind him the large part of a lifetime of unconscious preparation for what he had to do: for years he had been steeped in the folk-lore and legend of his native country; its local history had been his hobby; he had not only read its humbler literature but wandered widely among its people, absorbed its language and its life, felt "the very pulse of the machine." Hence he differed toto caelo from an archeologist turned romancer like the German Ebers: being rather a genial traveler ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the exuberant foolishness which had led him to spout ancient history and claim descent from William of Orange. It had been a hobby, and artificial topic for conversation that amused him and his companions, a defense against the monotony of Venus that had begun to affect his personality perhaps a bit more than he realized. He ...
— Wind • Charles Louis Fontenay
... grave, from exasperation at his inability to make his "pothooks," when she was teaching him writing, without blots. Curiously enough, when, some years ago, improvements were being made at the Abbey, a number of copy-books of the style of writing common at the period in which Lady Hobby lived were discovered behind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... as we have said, cultivated a taste for mechanics and natural science. There was an awakening of the mind, in physics as well as in politics, at that period; and it must be confessed that the natural philosophers have succeeded better than the constitution-makers. Paine's mechanical hobby was an iron bridge. A single arch, of four hundred feet span, and twenty feet in height from the chord-line, was to be thrown over the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia. The idea was suggested to him by a spider's web, a section of which the bridge resembled; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of Pantomime are of considerable antiquity; as, for instance, the basket-work hobby-horses, that figured as far back as the old English Morris dances, to be revived in the French ballet of the seventeenth century, and, in after ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... much retired from the world, and meddling little in its concerns, yet I think it almost a religious duty to salute at times my old friends, were it only to say and to know that 'all's well.' Our hobby has been politics; but all here is so quiet, and with you so desperate, that little matter is furnished us for active attention. With you too, it has long been forbidden ground, and therefore imprudent ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... thermic induction mostly," answered Hooker. "And when I want a rest I take a crack at the fourth dimension—spacial curvature's my hobby. But I'm always working at radio stuff. That's where the big things are going to be ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... rooms uncarpeted, whose paper was dropping off the wall,—well might it be called paper-hanging indeed!—whose washing-tables were of deal, and whose delf was of the plainest ware, and even that minus sundry handles and spouts. Nor was the renowned O'Grady without his hobby, too. While the various members of his family were thwarting each other, his master-mischief was thwarting them all; like some wicked giant looking down on a squabble of dwarfs, and ending the fight by kicking them all right and left. ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... is fortunate enough to have a suitable piece of water of his own, as well as a bit of ground to rear them on, that he can make his accounts balance at the end of the year. In other words, he will be able to give his friends some very enjoyable shooting, and supply himself with a hobby of which he will never be tired, at no expense to himself. In support of my statement I propose to give a few figures. The breeding stock has of course to be purchased, and for the sake of simplicity let us put it at twenty ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... case to the Society," said her brother, promptly. "Father believes all charity should be done through organizations. 'Organized effort' is his hobby," added Walter, ruefully. "He says I lack ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... Italian fashions on his return from Italy, "when he made no bones of taking the wall of Sir Philip Sidney, in his black Venetian velvet."[92] On this the fertile invention of Nash raises a scandalous anecdote concerning Gabriel's wardrobe; "a tale of his hobby-horse reuelling and domineering at Audley-end, when the Queen was there; to which place Gabriel came ruffling it out, hufty tufty, in his suit of veluet—" which he had "untrussed, and pelted the outside from the lining of an old velvet saddle he had borrowed!" "The ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... they could there'd be no big ones. My dear fellow, we know little nations are your hobby, but surely office ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in command was Major Macleod, a bloodthirsty Scot whose hobby was bayonet work. He was very successful at showing that, when all's said and done, it's the bayonet that wins battles. Others before him have sworn that it is only hand-grenades, heavy guns, or even cavalry that can give a decisive victory. ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... Selm would labour like any of his crew over a net coming in or in an emergency, but he ate off silver and slept between sheets of exceedingly fine linen. Though a sailor, almost one might say a fisherman, he was always Monsieur le Prince and though his hobby lay in the depths of the sea his intellect did not lie there too. Politics, Literature and Art travelled with him as mind companions, whilst in the flesh he often managed to bring off with him on his "outlandish expeditions" ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... second and more important nuptials; and the second shall preface the third; meanwhile, you return to the court. To these ceremonials you need be no party: keep but thy handsome son from breaking his neck in over-riding his hobby, and ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one time been fond of acting, had even rented a theatre in London, and on its boards had first seen Miss Marion Dawson, to whom he had offered his hand, his title, and the third of a county. Since his marriage this early hobby had become distasteful to him. Even in private theatricals it was no longer possible to persuade him to exercise the talent which he had often shown that he possessed. He was happier with a spud and a watering-can among ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... white hat of Clarkson could be seen above the veranda railing, and Mrs. McVeigh threw open the glass doors as he appeared at the top of the steps with an immense boquet held with especial care—the Judge's one hobby in the realm of ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... wonder; for it had always been a hobby of mine that a certain amount of the married leaven was necessary in every society to give it tone and stamina. Though the French principle of excluding young ladies from all social intercourse, and giving the patent of society to Madame, may be productive ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... when one has no longer the teeth? The marriageable age had passed. I resigned my situation, however, to make way for some one poorer than myself. At the end of a month I was sick and tired of life; and, to replace the affections that had been denied me, I resolved to give myself a passion, a hobby, a mania. I became a collector of books. You think, sir, perhaps that to take an interest in books a man must have ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... decently. It'll be an effort for them; but I hope they'll make it. It would be an awful nuisance if young Billy made an ass of himself in any way. He loves making an ass of himself. It's a sort of hobby of his." ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Shakspeare used the current language of his day, we mean only that he habitually employed such language as was universally comprehensible,—that he was not run away with by the hobby of any theory as to the fitness of this or that component of English for expressing certain thoughts or feelings. That the artistic value of a choice and noble diction was quite as well understood in his day as in ours is evident ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... course I didn't tell her. Do you suppose a girl like Miss Wrenner's got nothing to do but to listen to my autobiography? Do you imagine she collects marriage certificates? Do you think she makes a hobby of the census?' ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... ruined abbey or ancient castle, or to get a picturesque view of the fells. Donald, who was keen on collecting birds' eggs, would often stop the party, to hunt for nests in the hedges or banks; while Meg, whose hobby at present was wild flowers, kept a watchful eye for any fresh specimens that she might ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Mifflin was well astride his hobby: he had started to tell the children about Robin Hood, but I had the sense to give him a wink. We had to be getting along or surely Andrew might be on us. So while Mifflin was putting Pegasus into the shafts again I picked out seven or eight books that I thought ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... millionaire's penchant for collecting fleas—he, it is rumoured, having paid as much as a thousand dollars for specimens of a particularly rare species. It is a passion perhaps hard to understand, but, at least, as we say, it is "different." Mr. Carnegie's more comprehensible hobby for building libraries shows also no little originality in a man of a class which is not as a rule devoted to literature. Another millionaire I recently read of, who refused to pay the smallest account till it had run for five years, and would then gladly pay it, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne |
